Epidemic of the Living Dead

by John Russo

  There were three boys standing shoulder to shoulder with Darius Hornsby, two of them black and one of them white, all with smirks on their faces, aloof from the proceedings. Several badass-looking girls were clustered around them, including Tricia Lopez, a close friend of Bill’s daughter, Jodie. He figured that the three boys huddled around Darius must be members of his rock band, and the girls must be groupies. Their openly disdainful attitude seemed like typical adolescent insolence, unwarranted and disdainfully aggravating, but usually harmless unless it led to something worse.

  The vast majority of the other kids in the prayer group seemed to piously believe in what they were doing here, and the looks on their faces plus the way they gazed so reverently at their pastor indicated that they were awed to be in his presence. At the end of the prayer Reverend Carnes made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Then Bennett Stein said, “All right, boys and girls! I’ll see you at next week’s youth group meeting.”

  As the teenagers began to disperse, Margaret Stein called out, “Do your homework! Be good in school! And be good to your parents!”

  Bill heard a few snickers as the kids disbanded in groups of three and four and Darius, Kathy, Tricia, and Darius’s boy buddies remained clustered together as if joined at the hip. As they shouldered past him with scornful looks on their faces, he wished he could stop them, put some pressure on them, and fire questions at them, but he had no grounds for doing it.

  He went up to Carnes and said, “Reverend, may I have a word with you?”

  The reverend said, “Surely you’re not going to arrest me again?” And he turned toward Attorney Stein for moral support.

  Stein put his hand up as if warding Bill off and said, “As his legal counsel, I won’t let him answer any questions that might—”

  “Don’t get your ass in an uproar,” Bill barked. “He hasn’t been charged with anything, at least not so far. But if I start to think either of you might be obstructing a police investigation, that would be a different matter entirely.”

  “I know nothing about the bodies missing from Kallen’s Funeral Home,” Reverend Carnes blurted.

  “Well, you’ve just made it clear that you know something,” Bill shot back at him. “How did you even find out about it?”

  “In Chapel Grove, everybody knows everything.”

  “Don’t say anything further,” Stein warned.

  Bill said, “I won’t take up too much of your time if you’ll be truthful with me.”

  “My husband always tells the truth!” Margaret Stein said indignantly. “And so does my pastor! We’re God-fearing people!”

  “I have no doubt of that,” Bill said, although inwardly he meant it sarcastically and not as a compliment. Maybe Margaret picked up on that, because she kept working her mouth as if wanting to say something nasty to him. He wished she wouldn’t because she had a shrill voice that made his teeth hurt and was in perfect apposition with her garish red dress, red plastic spike-heeled shoes, and gaudy red smears of lipstick and rouge.

  Attorney Stein said, “Go ahead and ask your questions, Detective, but I reserve the right to instruct my client not to answer.” Turning to his wife, he said, “Margaret, why don’t you wait for me in the church till this is over?”

  “Surely you won’t let him arrest you!” Margaret shrilled. And she shot Bill a distasteful look. Then she huffily stomped out of the cemetery.

  He said to Carnes, “I’d like to have a look inside the church, if you don’t mind. And in that storage shed over there.”

  “You’d have to show us a warrant,” Attorney Stein said.

  “Why?” Bill said. “As long as you have nothing to hide.”

  “This is police harassment!” Carnes shouted. “We’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “What about your followers?” Bill shot back at him. “You have them in thrall. Perhaps some of them took it upon themselves to do something they thought you’d approve of, even if you didn’t tell them to do it. That way you could have plausible denial.”

  “Oh, I get it!” Carnes scoffed. “We’re talking tacit conspiracy here, like when King Henry supposedly implied to his henchmen that he wanted to get rid of the Archbishop of Canterbury!”

  “Something like that, but not so grandiose,” Bill said. “It’s obvious that you’ve got your people thoroughly indoctrinated.”

  “I fulfill their spiritual needs,” Carnes said. “They’ve flocked back to the church because they can no longer deny that the supernatural is real. They pray that the dead will not arise.”

  “Hah!” Bill scoffed. “Do you believe they’re alive under the ground? How are they going to break out of their vaults and coffins and push through six feet of hard-packed dirt?”

  “The same way they will do it on Judgment Day!” Carnes snapped.

  “This interview is over right now!” Bennett Stein declared vehemently. He grabbed Carnes’s arm to lead him out of the cemetery, but Carnes shrugged him off and said, “It’s all right, Bennett, this detective can’t hurt me. The Lord protects me with the power of sanctifying grace.”

  “You’re convinced Jesus is on your side,” Bill told him, “so you think you can get away with anything. You and your parishioners with your handy mallets and spikes.”

  “If you have hard evidence against us, file your charge,” Stein said. “Otherwise, get off my client’s back.”

  Carnes said, “What happened to the Haley family was the devil’s work. I had nothing to do with it. My advice to you, Detective, is to shed your atheistic ways, get down on your knees, and pray that Almighty God doesn’t send the plague down on us all over again.”

  CHAPTER 23

  On the TV in her office at the institute, Dr. Traeger watched intently as a major media event unfolded. Kelly Ann Garfield, the infamous “Pickax Killer” from Texas, was about to be executed. A rowdy crowd was gathered outside the prison walls. An anti-death-penalty gospel singer was belting out “Amazing Grace,” while a pro-death-penalty group was chanting, “KILL THE BITCH! KILL THE BITCH!”

  Dr. Traeger had followed Kelly Ann’s story from the moment she was arrested and all through the trial, as much as she could, while still carrying out her daily responsibilities at the institute and at home with her daughter. In a jealous, vindictive rage fueled by drugs, Kelly Ann had used a pickax to chop up her exboyfriend and the girl he was in bed with, and had left the vicious weapon buried in the other girl’s chest. At trial, Kelly Ann boasted that each time she penetrated flesh and bone with her heavy weapon, she had an orgasm.

  But in prison she claimed she had been born again. She said she was no longer the evil person that she used to be. She was now, in the eyes of many, a saint, a Joan of Arc, who had undergone a divine transformation. Evangelical ministers, movie stars, and even the pope advocated for her. They said that she had been touched by the hand of God and should not now be executed, which would be a travesty. God had chosen her for a divine mission, to save the souls of other death row prisoners by blessing them, hearing their sins, and convincing them to accept Jesus. But the governor of Texas had decided to let God be her final judge, and he allowed her execution to go forward. This was after fourteen years of appeals and stays granted by what Dr. Traeger felt was a stodgy, convolutedly perverse legal system.

  She believed in the death penalty and agreed with the governor, and not because she coveted Kelly Ann for her experiments. She had never bought into the preposterous claim that the infamous “Pickax Killer” was no longer the same person who committed those heinous murders. She was the same person! Her views may have changed, her personality may have changed, but that did not mean that she should evade responsibility for her past actions. If she were truly enlightened, truly remorseful, she should have willingly gone to her own death. Dr. Traeger would have more strongly believed in the “new” Kelly Ann if she had instructed her lawyers to end her appeals and speed up her execution. Instead she became a cen
terpiece for the endless debate over capital punishment and whether or not it was a deterrent.

  Those who would excuse her and commute her sentence had tirelessly pointed out that she was led into a life of prostitution and drug addiction at the tender age of eleven, and by her own mother. This was, of course, a sad and woeful mitigating factor that was considered with a certain amount of empathy by the judge and jury during the penalty phase of her trial, and for years afterward by higher courts and judges all the way to the Supreme Court. Dr. Traeger agreed with the final decision. She believed that society needed to teach people that, no matter how angry or mistreated they may feel over their lot in life, they must not kill another human being unless their own lives were threatened. But with the added caveat of: unless it is for a good cause. For instance, when in warfare against the enemies of one’s country. Or, as in Dr. Traeger’s own case, when fully authorized to carry out experiments to preserve mankind.

  Soon Kelly Ann would be delivered to her, like the others whose executions had been faked over the years. It would be justice delayed, but in the end still accomplished, after she learned all she could from her.

  She had discovered how to stimulate early-onset Alzheimer’s by means of injection, and she had this in mind for Kelly Ann Garfield. She wanted to find out if follow-up injections of serum extracted from the brain of an undead specimen would actually delay or stop the slow deterioration of mental acuity in Kelly Ann once she had instigated the dementia in her.

  CHAPTER 24

  Driving back to the police station in the squad car he had checked out of the motor pool, Bill Curtis radioed ahead and asked to speak with Captain Danko. “Gone already,” the desk sergeant said. “I think he was gonna grab some restaurant chow on his way home.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Bill said.

  He pulled over to the curb when he spotted Pete’s black Mercedes parked in front of Chelsey’s Diner. It was past six o’clock, he was tired and frustrated after spending all day on the case of the missing bodies, and he was going to be late getting home. Lauren would probably have something ready for him to microwave. He thought he remembered her saying something about roast beef and mashed potatoes. Good. It’d be his excuse for not spending any more time with his boss than he really needed to.

  Pete looked up at him as he entered, and motioned for him to have a seat in his booth.

  “You going to have anything?” Pete asked.

  “Just coffee. Lauren cooked.”

  Pete was working on a plate of Chelsey’s beloved Southern fried chicken and potato salad, which made Bill almost sorry he wasn’t going to eat there. Chelsey, as pleasantly plump and cheerful as ever, came over with an order pad and poised pen, and he told her he just wanted some coffee with sugar and cream. “Piece of my wonderful coconut cream pie?” she teased, and with regrets he had to tell her no.

  When she went away, Pete said, “Tell me what brings you here.”

  “The case isn’t going well. I don’t have any leads, just a few suspicions.”

  “Did you speak with Steve Kallen?”

  “Of course.”

  “His daughter?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sam Kent, his handyman?”

  “Again, yep.”

  “Don’t be smart with me, Lieutenant.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be.”

  “Then be careful how you speak to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bill wanted to bite his tongue when he had to kowtow that way. It should’ve gone without saying that he would have done all the things Pete had grilled him on. He wasn’t an incompetent, and for about the umpteenth time he resented being treated that way. To forestall any more derogatory questions, he told Danko, “I’ve already been to the so-called Church of Lazarus Risen. What a name for it! Carnes and his lawyer clammed up on me. I’d like to obtain a search warrant for the church, the toolshed in the cemetery, the tractor shed, Carnes’s house, and any other place we can think of where they could hide three coffins.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Danko said.

  “Why?”

  “The good reverend is already under our watchful eye. And he’s not a fool. If he commits another offense, he’s looking at jail time.”

  “I think his fanaticism gets in the way of his good judgment,” Bill said.

  “Be that as it may, no judge is going to give us a search warrant without probable cause.”

  “I think we already have probable cause. His past history.”

  “Inadmissible.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t speak unless I’m certain of what I’m saying.”

  “I thought that maybe because of your position, you could pull some strings. Don’t you play golf with a judge or two?”

  “I do, and that’s why I can’t push for special favors. It wouldn’t look right. It could get me fired, or it could get a judge impeached.”

  “My other possible suspects are Darius Hornsby and his groupies,” Bill revealed. “But I’ve got no evidence.”

  “Right. So don’t grasp at straws,” Pete said.

  “I’m going to get surveillance footage from the different places around town that have mounted cameras,” Bill said. “Just to see if any of them recorded Darius’s bizarre silver van bopping around in the right time frame. The funeral home doesn’t have surveillance. I already checked.”

  “That would make it too easy,” Pete said.

  “Yeah, I wonder why Kallen doesn’t at least have a camera above that steel door in back.”

  “Probably because nobody is going to want to steal corpses.”

  “Well, not before now,” Bill said.

  “Don’t go making a pain in the ass of yourself with the merchants around here. Don’t bug them and get them all upset just to collect a bushel full of surveillance videos. The Chamber of Commerce will get on my ass.”

  “Point well taken,” Bill said, rather than arguing. “It bothers me that Darius Hornsby and his hangers-on would join Carnes’s youth group. They seem like the kind of snots who would make fun of religion, not buy into it.”

  “The plague has got everybody in town scared shitless,” Danko said. “Even our rebellious teenagers.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Bill. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Hang in here for a minute. I want to ask you something.”

  Bill sat back and waited. It would be unusual for his boss to ask his opinion on anything that much mattered.

  “Do you know much about the history of the first plague outbreaks here in America?” Pete asked.

  “The first one happened way before I was born, but I’ve read up on it and watched old news footage and documentaries.”

  “If you recall, they experimented on some of the undead back then,” Pete said.

  “That was before those kinds of experiments were made illegal, thanks to religious protest groups, mostly right-to-lifers. Their argument was that the undead were still human and could not be treated like lab animals.”

  “In other words, they could not be operated on against their will,” said Pete.

  “Right. That was the gist of it. The AMA fought it, but the law was upheld by the Supreme Court.”

  “What do you think of that ruling?” Pete asked.

  “I tend to think that the experiments should’ve been allowed to continue. I believe in stem cell research and all other forms of scientific enquiry, within ethical boundaries. I would be against potentially damaging or life-threatening experiments upon live human beings. But the plague victims are technically dead. Undead, but still animated somehow—we just don’t understand how. Whatever we can learn from them might lead to a cure.”

  “I agree,” said Pete. “And I would call that an enlightened attitude.”

  “Like I’ve told you before, I’m against ignorant people who always want to put barriers against scientific advancement.”

  “Again, an enlightened attitude,” said Pete. “You can
go now. I was curious about what you might say.”

  Getting up from the booth, Bill said, “See you tomorrow, boss. I’m going home and microwaving my dinner.”

  Pete said, “Tell your wife I said hello.”

  * * *

  After Bill left, Pete considered whether Bill’s “enlightened attitude,” if patiently stroked and groomed, might actually make him a good candidate for recruitment by Homeland Security. Although Bill seemed to harbor some vague suspicions about the official explanation for the outbreak in Chapel Grove, he was at heart a pragmatist. It might be rather easy to make him see the light and keep his mouth shut. If not, well, there were always quicker and more decisive ways to get rid of the problem.

  Three years ago, when Pete first took over as chief of police in Chapel Grove, he had resisted his instinct to get rid of Bill Curtis and replace him with someone who was ex-CIA, like himself. But Colonel Spence and Major Thurston didn’t want the kind of shake-up that would alarm the community, so it was decided that Bill Curtis and most of his fellow officers would have to stay on the force. Any of them, including Bill Curtis, could be eliminated in a timely manner, if the need should arise. In the meantime, Pete had to keep tabs on fluctuations in their thoughts, habits, and behavior patterns so he could determine when and if he must get rid of them.

  Pete also kept a watchful eye on the mayor, the town councilmen, and other notable citizens such as doctors, lawyers, and educators. He couldn’t allow anything to fester under the surface and erupt in a calamity.

  He thought about what Bill had said about the kids in Reverend Carnes’s youth group, and he wondered if Bill’s so-called “gut feelings” were somehow on the mark. Knowing that Darius and a couple of the others were adoptees from the Foster Project, Pete wondered if, by some stretch of the imagination, they were actually behind the theft of the dead bodies from Kallen’s Funeral Home. Perhaps they were now true believers in Carnes’s crackpot rants. Maybe they were as pliable and gullible as most other teenagers and if so, perhaps that nutty preacher had actually succeeded in brainwashing them.